Crash Bandicoot: Phase 4
Crash Bandicoot: Phase 4 is a platform game developed by Vicarious Visions and published by Activision. Phase 4 ''follows on from what ''N. Sane Trilogy ''had established and serves as a direct sequel to ''Crash Bandicoot: Warped, making it the second contender for the fourth main series installment canonically. The game takes place straight after the third game, having Dr. Neo Cortex, Dr. Nefarious Tropy and Uka Uka finding a working piece of the Time Twister machine and travelling through time to rewrite the events of Cortex Strikes Back's ending. With the Cortex Vortex succes sfully brainwashing the entire Earth, present day twists into a darker time and seals Uka Uka back into his temple prison, as the Cortex Vortex's destruction was the entire reason he was set free. However, they forget about removing Crash Bandicoot from the face of the Earth, meaning the events before Crash 2's final boss are still exactly the same. Crash and Aku Aku, living on the now-polluted and ruined N. Sanity Island, find out about this, along with the aforementioned Time Twister chunk now malfunctioning and needing Crystals to work again, and head out to stop the evil trio and re-rewrite history back into its former glory. Gameplay Crash Bandicoot: Phase 4 ''is a platform game in which the player controls Crash, Coco, and later Crunch Bandicoot, on their mission to gather the 40 Crystals to stop Cortex and N. Tropy from getting rid of Crash once and for all with his time machine, before they get the chance to. A huge portion of the game takes place in a HUB world called the Warp Zone, split into eight areas, each area having portals to approximately five levels each and a boss fight. The boss fight is unavailable to the player until they've collected every Crystal in each level of the area. Crystals are usually found during your first run of the level, but they're sometimes found after the level has been completed. When you defeat the boss unlocked by the Crystals, the next area of the Warp Zone will open up to you. You start the game with four lives (0 counting as a life itself) and one hit point. You get hit, you lose a life. Collecting Aku Aku masks will protect you for how many hit points. Collecting three of them without taking damage awards them invincibility for a limited amount of time. The Wumpa Fruit scattered throughout the levels can be used to earn more lives. 100 Wumpa Fruit = an extra life. Run out of lives, however, and it's game over. Back to the start of the level for you, unless you decide to quit the level. Regular levels have Bonus Platforms that lead to special bonus areas called Bonus Rounds that have you run through a mini-stage in a side-scrolling fashion. You can't lose any lives here, so you can play these Bonus Rounds as many times as you want, until you complete the round. If you complete a Bonus Round, you can't play it again unless you restart the level. The Bonus Platforms also act as a checkpoint. There are similar mini-stages called Death Routes, which are available by going through a level without dying once. Unlike Bonus Rounds, you can lose lives in these and they act like much harder, yet shorter levels in an already existing level. Some levels have mini-bosses in them. They are found at the end of these levels and drop a Crystal once defeated. When you re-enter the level after defeating them, a crate known as the "Rewind Crate" will make the mini-boss fight occur again. The mini-bosses include: *Coco Bandicoot (unlocked later as a playable character) *Papu Papu *Crunch Bandicoot (unlocked later as a playable character) *Koala Kong *Ripper Roo *Tiny Tiger *N. Trance (level in the Secret Warp Room) Besides Crystals, there are also Gems, neccessary for 100% completion. Clear gems can be earned by smashing every crate in a level, or by completing an aforementioned Death Route in a level. Coloured gems (Blue, Red, Green, Yellow, Purple, Orange) on the other hand are earned through different means, as they are split into pieces called Gem Shards. Gem Shards of any colour are found in regular levels and are earned through completing smaller objectives in levels. These can vary from smahing certain machines in a level or by finding a secret area. Once every Gem Shard of a certain colour has been collected, a new warp in a secret Warp Zone area will open up, for you to collect the full coloured Gem, acting as a regular Crystal. These coloured Gems will then unlock platforms in certain levels, to collect more regular Gems. It's a vicious cycle of collecting. Time Relics are collected by finishing a Time Trial in a level, which is an option you can have when you re-enter a level after collecting its Crystal. To begin the Time Trial, the player must collect the floating stopwatch seen at the start of the level. When it is collected, the player has finish the level as quickly as possible to get the best time. Some crates in the level are turned into Time Crates as a result. These crates can freeze the clock for 1-3 seconds, depending on the number of the crate. The type of Relic the player is awarder with (Sapphire, Gold and Platinum) depends on how low your time taken is to complete the level. You cannot lose lives in these Time Trials. Story Intro ''(taken from the non-existant instruction manual) Where, or should I say, when we last saw Dr Neo Cortex, Dr Nefarious Tropy and Uka Uka, they were sucked into what seems to be nowhere, along with Tropy’s time machine, the Time Twister. Yes, the Time Twister. That can’t be good. One… day? Does time even pass in there? Um… OK, at one point (let’s just go with that), the three villains had found a huge, working chunk of the Time Twister, perfect for escaping out of the prison of time they were once trapped in. They did a bit of tweaking and tinkering, and then they were outta there. They went on a massive rampage through time, changing empires into their own image and making times that they once lost into times that they once won, including the dreaded Cortex Vortex incident. That meant everyone on Earth was under Dr Cortex’s control. His mindless slaves. His puppets. But they forgot to change one event that would be the bane of his existence ever since. The creation of Crash Bandicoot. Meanwhile, on the Wumpa Islands, our hero and his trusty sidekick, Aku Aku, wake up to a ruined, polluted and grey N. Sanity Island, with the good doctor’s Lab Assistants roaming around, causing more chaos. They eventually find out about Cortex’s time machine and its recent malfunctioning, resulting in the search of the Power Crystals once again, to stabilise said machine, therefore successfully getting rid of everyone who stands in his way. There’s your mission. Retrieve the Crystals and make sure you foil Cortex’s, Tropy’s and Uka’s plans along the way, in order to save the Earth. ''Good luck, Crash, we’re counting on you!'' Events that happen after the intro The fifth level of the first Warp Zone area sees Crash fighting a brainwashed Coco. Crash defeats her (obviously) and Aku Aku snaps her out of Cortex's trance. She is then unlocked as a cosmetically-different counterpart to Crash. Later on in the game, a time warp appears, with a mysterious (and also brainwashed) red-coloured bandicoot from the not-that-far-off future named Crunch, fit with a metal arm that can let him travel through time, if he's holding a Crystal at that specific time. Crash, again, defeats him (no kidding!) and he is automatically snapped out of Cortex's trance this time around, as Crunch was brainwashed through less powerful means than the stronger Cortex Vortex. Crunch agrees to help Crash and Coco collect Crystals and stop Cortex's evil scheme. He is then unlocked as a playable character (with his own levels and moveset). Regular ending Crash, Coco and Crunch finally make it to Cortex and N. Tropy's base of operations in outer space, with an all-new Crystal magnet, sucking up every single Crystal collected by the three and connecting them to the time machine. This leads to a battle between each team through time, switching to each bandicoot in the middle of every single phase. The battle ends with Cortex and N. Tropy helping Past Cortex to get to the Cortex Vortex once again, with Crash defeating both Cortexes (and N. Tropy) on his space motorcycle. The ending then goes back to present day, right outside the space station. Uka Uka fades back into the picture, as the Cortex Vortex crashing onto Uka Uka's temple was redone, angry at Cortex for screwing up so badly at defeating the Bandicoots and stopping them from fixing the present. N. Tropy then stands up from his new found seat (the metal floor of the machine) and says to Crash that he'll be back soon enough, hijacking the time machine, taking the Crystals for himself and leaving with Uka Uka, as he trusts Tropy more than Cortex. Later, back at the Bandicoot House, Crunch starts to fade away, as he wouldn't be there if Cortex's bad future hadn't existed. He wishes Crash, Coco, Aku Aku and their pets "good luck" and waves goodbye. Coco then asks what N. Tropy and Uka might be doing, with Aku giving the response "I'm not exactly sure. All I know is Cortex won't be of much use in their plan." Meanwhile, back in space, Cortex is seen all alone in the depths of space and eventually gets hit by an asteroid, falling down to Earth. 100% ending Once the player has collected all of the Gems, a cutscene will play after collecting the last Gem. The cutscene has N. Tropy challenging the Bandicoots to a fight to the death in Hyperspace. Then, the Gem path to N. Tropy's secret hide-out in the Warp Zone is fully complete. Once Crash and Coco defeat N. Tropy and Uka Uka in Hyperspace, Uka finally gets fed up of Tropy as well. He gets afraid and tries to run away, using the time machine to warp to... present day, again... Basically, he used it to travel light years away from Uka. Uka then quickly rushes into the warp that the time machine had created. The time lord keeps warping away from Uka until they both reach the Earth's atmosphere and start falling back down to Earth, dropping the Crystals on the way down. They land on a small island filled with sharp, tall, spiky rocks, where Cortex had originally landed. The time machine smashes on impact. Uka then threatens to give them endless suffering for their many dud plans. The sky turns stormy and grey, along with rain and lightning falling down onto the island. Cortex and N. Tropy run away, while a huge chasm builds up behind them. It then cuts to black with Coco saying, "Let's just hope Uka Uka never bothers us ever again." Level Themes Tropical Crash and/or Coco make their way through the dying beaches, jungles and treetops of the Wumpa Islands, fighting off Lab Assistants chopping down trees and collecting Wumpa Fruit, while also swinging on vines to cross huge gaps. Mines Crash and/or Coco run through Cortex's various mines scattered all around the Wumpa Archipelago, with pools of water, lava and acid having a huge presence. Some levels have the two ride a minecart down a rail track. Chase/Underwater Tubes Crash and/or Coco run through a series of tubes under the many oceans of the Earth. The glass tubes have a tendency to break under the sea's extreme pressure, leading to cause floods. Wetlands The two bandicoot siblings have to wade through polluted Australian wetlands and ride on Crash's Jet Board, that had previously debuted in the second game. Greek These levels see Crunch, from the near future, travelling to modern Greece, now turned into a soulless, money-hungry tourist attraction driven on nostalgia for ancient Greece. Haunted Crash and/or Coco have to traverse through a haunted castle in Transylvania, fighting off both ghosts and ghostbusting Lab Assistants that seem more interested in busting bandicoots. The ground of the cemeteries allow the two to dig underground. Bat/Fortress Crash flies through a dangerous mechanical fortress, complete with traps to stop him in his tracks. These levels play similarly to the ride levels from the original trilogy. Urban Crunch goes through the roads of a massive, bleak cityscape, fit with traffic to avoid. Carnival Crash and/or Coco visit a twisted carnival in Europe, decorated with sleepy minions on lookout for trespassers. Factory Cortex's manufacturing plants run by Tawna, Pinstripe and his Potoroo mafia. These levels have Nitro crates galore, so tread lightly. Mountain A huge railroad in the Himalayan mountains. There are grids that Crash and Coco can hang onto and climb, and need to, because it's a long way down. Moon Colony Cortex's many bases on the Moon. There are places outside the buildings where you can pass, but you've got to be quick, as Crash and Coco can only have enough air to breathe. Planet Mars Crunch lands on Mars and has to fight odd-looking aliens and Lab Assistant astronauts. Race/Asteroid Belt Crash rides a shiny, new space bike through the asteroid belt that separates Mars from Jupiter, in order to race some of Cortex's other minions: Ripper Roo, Koala Kong, Tiny Tiger, Penta Penguin and Fake Crash, for a Crystal. Boss Fights There are 9 bosses in the game. They are as follows: #Rilla Roo (fought in a greenhouse) #Komodo Bros. (fought in a Mayan temple) #The Bearminator (fought on an iceberg) #Dingodile (fought in a swamp) #Pinstripe Potoroo (fought in a nightclub/casino area, filled with neon lights) #Dr. N. Gin (fought in a city) #Dr. Nitrus Brio (fought on Venus) #Dr. Neo Cortex and Dr. Nefarious Tropy (fought in a giant space station) #Dr. Nefarious Tropy and Uka Uka (fought in Hyperspace) Hyperspace Variants The secret area in the Warp Zone have levels that have themes similar to these ones, but are in the far off depths of Hyperspace instead. The reason this page exists I'm excited for what the possible new Crash platformer could bring to the table, so I made a concept for what it could do. If Vicarious Visions notices this, I would be overjoyed. Shout out to this other idea for "the true Crash 4". Crash Bandicoot: Phase 5 Endeavour, it's called. It's another pretty cool concept, I think. Nice work, Stephenpaternoster1. Category:Games Category:Crash Games